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Traits of a Successful Leader

Renjith VP
Friday, December 3, 2010
Renjith VP
Lot of people talk about their success stories and highlight upbeat instances from their career which substantiate their success. But a person cannot truly understand, appreciate and reiterate success unless they know failure. Failure, which in other words ‘success we have not seen’, plays an important role in every successful leadership. Shouvick Mukherjee, Vice President and CEO Yahoo! India feel that the biggest thinking and learning comes from failures.

“Failure helps a true leader to envision success. In fact, for a good leader there is no such thing as failure. It’s a redefinition of success. Real success awaits the one who admit failure and try to advance to the next level without repeating it and instead learning from it” says Dr. P Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, talking about “how successful leaders think”.

A good leader always walks the talk. He embraces the value and organizational culture and acts accordingly. “Every organization nurtures a work culture. In our organization we used to send boxes of alphonso mangoes to the family members of each employee specially mentioning their names. A particular year, I was abroad on the occasion when things got messed up and the mango boxes were not delivered properly. So queries came from the families asking why the boxes were missing this time. Similarly we used to provide our team members, employees and customers with umbrellas during the rainy season in Mumbai. So once you come without or forgetting the umbrella, even the security right at the front gate asks why you forgot your umbrella. All these little things add to the work culture and fun element at the work place” observes Amit Chatterjee, Vice President & country manager, CA India, pondering how important value system of a firm should be for a leader in creating success stories.

Amit added that there should be something extra in a leader which cajoles the people to follow him while addressing the summit. During his talk he pointed out that a good leader should posses individual character traits like ability to objective listening, picking the valuable points, good emotional control, a never say die attitude and the ability to excite and bring energy to members of his team. He underlined the fact that every leader should have the ‘gut’ and believe in playing it very hard. He or she should not show bias. Though the concept of charisma seems clichéd at this point, it is something that is inevitable in successful leadership. He cited the example of Arjun Malhotra, co-founder of HCL, who made everyone close to him feel special with his charisma. He also remembered Mark, founder of a semi-conductor firm in Noida, who impressed him with his mannerisms and style.

He called for sincerity of purpose to be a major trait for anyone who aspires to be a great leader. He or she should believe in the mission and should be committed to the rest of the team. He reminded the audience that not only success matters but the journey you take to reach that success. Leaders in any industry domain must also see to it that they hire and work with people better than them. If they are good in communication they should hire people good in creativity and hence forth adding complimentary values to your organization. He should not be giving just a sermon but should set the example by enacting it, he repeated adding that the guts to do it is something that one develops over a period of time and with experience. “People need feedback. So if you under communicate it will create perceptions which doesn’t do good. A leader shouldn’t mind over communicating which will only return positive results at the end” added Amit.
P Anandan took the occasion to highlight leaders from outside the industries for according to him “99 percent of life lies outside industries and most leadership can be seen outside industry”. He cited the example of Viswamitra, one of the ‘saptarishis’ of ancient Hindu mythology to underline aspirational leadership. Once a king, Kaushik instilled the aspiration to possess saintly virtues and become Viswamitra after getting defeated by Vasishta, another great rishi. He was a dogged fighter and attained what he envisioned. Anandan also quoted the examples of Akbar and Ashoka who dominated the leadership quality by embracing the opposites. While Ashoka lived the message of peace apart from fighting the violent battle of Kalinga, Akbar promoted Hinduism and other religions, being a Muslim ruler. He said that Gandhi and Budha were also great leaders who never gave up a bit for their goals of ultimate liberation.

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